Daniel Knowles writes for the Economist about politics and economics and is @dlknowles on Twitter.

Society isn't broken: we're just ignoring the bits that work

I awoke this morning, slightly bleary eyed, to find an army outside my window. For a second, I thought a war must be on but then it transpired that most of the camouflage-clad young men and women standing in neat rows were about 15 – all cadets. Then there were some dignified old West Indian gentlemen in dress uniforms, and a detachment of perhaps twenty real soldiers led by a man with a stick (Territorial Army I later discovered). I found some trousers, wandered outside and asked a bemused police officer what was going on. "It's a commemoration" he said, "for West Indian servicemen". And under my window!

Pretty soon, an order went up and the assembled teenagers, grandfathers and soldiers began marching towards Brixton Town Hall, five abreast, blocking off traffic. On the pavements, children and adults stood and cheered. Then several dignitaries gave speeches, before a minutes silence. One man (annoyingly, I didn't find out his position) praised the West Indies veterans' organisation which organised the march: "we cannot rely on anything other than this spirit of endurance and our own endeavour". The Jamaican High Commissioner paid homage to West Indians "serving around the world, wherever the Union flag is flying" and to Jamaica's pride in its history and its part in the Commonwealth.

And I realised as I watched this spectacle take over Brixton, that these hundred or so teenagers are a much fairer representation of the area than their contemporaries who hang out in children's parks smoking dope. They're more normal than the few hundred who came through smashing windows and stealing televisions three months ago. Most of the Caribbean mothers standing around the edges were the sort you see arguing over the price of meat in the butchers' shops on Electric Avenue, watching proudly as their children spent their Sunday morning standing to attention to honour British soldiers. This is what Brixton usually looks like.

We in the media are not switched on enough to things like this. Places like Brixton mostly get attention from journalists when riots break out, or when someone is murdered, or as part of angst-filled social commentaries written from the worst estates. It's important to cover those things, of course, and if all anyone wrote about was how happy the world is, the newspaper industry would be far closer to death than it already is. But it is too easy to think of areas like Brixton purely as poverty-struck, crime-ridden, welfare-dependent sink holes. They're not.

When I hear politicians use phrases like the "broken society", as David Cameron still occasionally does, it makes me deeply uneasy. What amazes me is how well things are actually still working, especially when you consider the state of the economy. Sure, we've got problems, but I'm inclined to agree with the Army officer I spoke to this morning: I suggested that this is a pretty good show of why society isn't broken. He cheerily replied that all these politicians "are talking out of their f***ing a***s".